Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 402 ^ 404

doi:10.1068/d9107a

Comments on ``Theorizing sociospatial relations''

Edward S Casey 402

Anssi Paasi 405
Michael J Shapiro 411
Margit Mayer 414

These initial responses to the paper by Jessop, Brenner, and Jones were invited by the
editors. The authors will be given an opportunity to respond in a later issue. The editors
are willing to consider other contributions to the debate. Inquiries should be made to
stuart.elden@durham.ac.uk in the first instance.
Questioning ``Theorizing sociospatial relations''
Edward S Casey
The Philosophy Department, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA;
e-mail: Edward.Casey@Stonybrook.edu

``Theorizing sociospatial relations'' is a thoughtful and provocative foray into current

paradigms of socially specific spatial relations. It offers an effective critique of one-
dimensional models of such relations önamely, those that privilege territory, place,
scale, or network as possessing exclusive explanatory and predictive value. On the
authors' account, these models claim far more than they can deliver. Each gives
a partial analysis of the ``concrete-complex'' of sociospatial relations; none suffices to
give an adequate theory of the whole of such relations. In particular, each commits an
error of pars pro toto, and it does so by being too narrow and analytical, too vague
in conceptual specification, or too reductionistic. Each declares itself to be uniquely
valid for the grasp of the spatial aspects of social relations; thus each commits the
error of being unduly ``centrist'' (eg, ``place-centric'', ``network-centric'', etc). Proceeding
by a critique that is parallel to deconstruction in philosophy, the authors demonstrate
the blindness and shortcomings of such centrisms, which thereby fail to give the ``thick
description'' that spatial-social relations calls for.
For Jessop, Breener, and Jones (2008), at least two or more of these four dimen-
sions should be invoked if the ideal of such description is to be pursued. But even this
is insufficient, and their stronger proposal is that all four dimensions need to be put
into play, albeit not necessarily all at once: rather, a ``spiral movement'' of alternative
approaches is recommended. In short, ``Investigators could thereby explore the social
world from different entry points whilst still ending with complex ^ concrete analyses
in which each moment finds its appropriate descriptive-cum-explanatory weight''
(page 394). They describe the resulting model as one of ``polymorphy of sociospatial
relations'' (page 396).
I regard this proposal as very promising, and it is certainly preferable to the
one-dimensional alternatives. But it brings with it two basic problems:
(1) If we are to move to a pluralistic paradigm, what guarantees that four and not
n ‡ 4 dimensions will be in play? The attraction of the quaternion schema is indeed
powerful ö as we can see from previous thinkers: Aristotle posits four basic kinds of
cause, Kant four sorts of judgment, and Heidegger four cosmic dimensions of things
(earth, sky, mortals, and gods). Jung, who proposed four basic psychological types
Comments on ``Theorizing sociospatial relations'' 403

(feeling, sensing, thinking, and intuiting), observed that there is something deeply
satisfying about a four-fold division: not only is it an even number but it allows for
analysis into two pairings within it. For this very reason, however, I am somewhat
suspicious of the authors' quaternary model. It may be satisfying to the intellect
and elegant to the eye, but does it do justice to what the authors themselves desig-
nate as ``the importance of contradictions, conflicts, dilemmas'', etc (page 394)? Isn't
the main tenor of their discussion conciliatory, since they find a place for each
dimension and its peculiarities in their preferred model, as if there were no residual
conflict or tension? A still more crucial question is this: is it necessarily the case
there are just four leading dimensions of sociospatial relations? This seems unlikely
on the face of it. The candidates proposed by the authors are perfectly plausible, and
they reflect the best thinking of the last twenty years or so of social-spatial theory.
But would they be the same dimensions as the authors themselves might have chosen
in, say, the latter 19th century when a Darwinian natural selection schema might be
especially compelling? Might not such a schema figure as a fifth dimension? How can
it be ruled out in advance? In other words, if one moves into polymorphic thinking,
what is to limit the number of preferred or pertinent models to four? The four here
proposed may be plausible for the state of theorizing at this moment, but what about
a decade from now ö when perhaps three other equally plausible dimensions may
have been proposed by subsequent theorists?
(2) If my first question bears on the number of members of the proposed model for
sociospatial relations, my second concerns the status of each such member. Should we
assume that each is more or less equivalent, as the culminating table 3 attempts to
demonstrate? The very presentation of this table, with sixteen squares charged with
approximately equivalent functional significance gives the distinct impression of homo-
geneous valency throughout. But why should we subscribe to this? The authors admit,
on their spiral interpretation, that different factors will be differentially important
at various times. But that is not a strong enough admission: it is so obvious as to be
trivial. Instead, I would raise the question of how it can be denied in principle that
at least one of the four dimensions is more important than the others.
For my money, place seems to me to play this role. It does so by virtue of being
itself ingredient in the other three dimensions, structuring them from within. For
instance, take the case of territory, which is defined in terms of `frontiers, borders,
and boundaries' as its essential structures. But this triad of terms draws its primal sense
from place, which requires just such delimitations in each case (otherwise, place would
bleed into space and lose its own identity). The same is true of the ``nested or tangled
hierarchies'' by which scale is defined: these make no intuitive sense without at least
a tacit reference to places in their verticality, that is, ascending placial scenarios such
as mountains rising from the plain or stratigraphic layers in the earth. Even the
flows of networks, however spontaneous and rhizomatic they may be, have to occur
somewhere öon some `plateau' or `plane of immanence' in the Deleuzian terms for
their localization: these, too, are places or place like.
But my argument is not just that there are elements of, or analogies to, place to be
found in all four dimensions; it is that place is more formative and generative, more
primal in its power, than the others. I cannot argue for this here (see Casey, 1993;
1997). In my view, place is primus inter pares, `first among equals', when it comes to the
four dimensions discerned by the authors of ``Theorizing sociospatial relations.'' And
this not just ``in specific historical ^ geographical contexts'' (page 395) öto cite one of
the authors' rare nods to the historicity of such relations ^ but in every such context,
however diverse it may be from other contexts.
404 Comments on ``Theorizing sociospatial relations''

Of course, one can always attempt to delimit a given model and show that it is just
one of several crucial factors, whether four or more. But to do so one must argue
systematically for the partialness and incompleteness of the model. It is not enough
to say that place theories fail ``to consider how processes of place production are
constitutively intertwined with the territorial, scalar, and networked dimensions of
sociospatial relations'' (page 391). For one might grant such intertwiningöas I for
one certainly wouldöand still maintain the primacy of place. In fact, the intertwining
goes both ways (as I argued above, place is intrinsic to territory, scale, and networks;
and these latter to place itself ). But this fact does not, by itself, undo the priority
of place of which Archytas was the first to speak in the West: place, he said, is ``the
first of all things, since all existing things are either in place or not without place''
(Archytas, cited by Simplicius). What Archytas said in the 4th century BC still holds
true today, despite the many historical, geographical, and theoretical vicissitudes that
have occurred since that time. It is not true because Archytas (or any other authority)
said it; it is true because a careful descriptive analysis demonstrates its truth. And if this
is so, place cannot be consigned to being merely one of several dimensions, as if it were
neither more nor less important than the others. As welcome as a polymorphic
paradigm isöespecially compared with monodimensional modelsöit brings with it
the attendant danger of the pseudo-equality of its members whereby it is indifferent
to certain intrinsic priorities. First among these priorities is place.
In sum, for all its merits the polyvalent model put forth by Jessop, Brenner, and
Jones still must answer these two questions: how to legitimate the choice of four
privileged modelsöno more and no lessöand how to deny the real possibility that
one of these models (to wit, place) has priority vis-a©-vis the others.
References
Casey E S, 1993 Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN)
Casey E S, 1997 The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA)
Jessop B, Brenner N, Jones M, 2008, ``Theorizing sociospatial relations'' Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 26 389 ^ 401

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